They received their dev kit in late November, and after a few days of tinkering, were able to hook up an Oculus Rift with the Kinect 2 in order to manipulate an off-the-shelf robotic arm. According to our interview with a group of JPL engineers, the combination of the Oculus's head-mounted display and the Kinect's motion sensors has resulted in "the most immersive interface" JPL has built to date. Join us after the break to see a video of this in action and find out just why one of them has called this build nothing short of revolutionary.

JPL took part in the first Kinect developer program as well, so it was already intimately familiar with how Kinect's motion sensor technology worked. It built a series of applications and eventually worked with Microsoft to release a game where you were tasked with landing Curiosity safely on Mars. The second Kinect, however, offers a lot more precision and accuracy than the first. "It allowed us to track open and closed states, and the rotation of the wrist," says Human Interfaces Engineer Victor Luo. "With all of these new tracking points and rotational degrees of freedom, we were able to better manipulate the arm."